Among Amid While

31 March, 2006

Gothic! Ten Original Dark Tales

My vote goes to 'Watch and Wake', M. T. Anderson's wonderfully creepy story of weasels, witches and wax faces (oops, spoiler!) as the best in this anthology. Retold from a story by Lucius Apuleius. I know; I'd never heard of him either.

Kids' Night In 2...

...is doing well out there. Penguin wrote today to tell me it had been chosen for the Books Alive campaign. It's also had some good reviews. From Viewpoint:

It's a fun way to end a night, a good way to begin a morning and a great break at lunch. It's a book that stands up for the bullied, the friendly and the friendless. It's a book that had a four year old in fits of laughter and a thirteen year old reading by torchlight under her quilt.

is what my parents would have considered an excellent travel book when I was growing up -- it’s the sort of thing that could be traded back and forth between my brother and I and both of us would have found plenty in here to enjoy. More importantly, readers will find a ton of new authors to explore further after dipping into this collection which is exactly the sort of thing they should do after starting here. Finally, War Child is an excellent and impressive charity to support, especially when we all seem so hellbent lately on creating as many child refugees as possible. Buy the book, enjoy some great literature and help change the world for some desperate kids.To this anthology, "Margo Lanagan contributes a heartbreaking poem of quiet contemplation", but don't let that put you off.

28 March, 2006

Enduring Fiction

"Writing is not an art, it's a craft.There are very few writers in the world producing art - timeless works which will be valued in a hundred years the way they are today. They exist, but they are few. And probably foreign.

The rest of us are producing craft, at best - skillful work which provides pleasure but is, fundamentally, disposable."

OK, I'm leaving aside the art-as-enduring/craft-as-disposable divide (but you're wrong, Nick, wrong :) - and (updated) I don't leave it aside at all). I'm not well, and I should be off writing. But this stuff about "will be valued in a hundred years". I was at the panel on The Canon of speculative fiction at Magic Casements on Saturday, and there was a lot of this kind of talk. What do we think will last? And the implication seemed to be that writers should aspire to be placed on the canon, should be aiming for such high quality that their works are guaranteed to endure 200 years and more.

The thing is, we have no control about what will last. A bloke in the audience talked about picking up lists from the beginning of the 20th century and not having heard of a single author or work on them. It's not up to us; it's up to a million million tiny and tremendous events that will happen without us. So what are we doing when we try to establish a canon? We're trying to decide what is most significant now. We're trying to define the shape of the field now. We're not sending messages to the future. We're laying down a historical document. We're telling people who are entering the field as readers for the first time now, what we think is of most value, now. And we're helping people already reading in the field decide what to read next.

I'm sure there are writers who think they are writing for posterity. Well, maybe we all are, but we can't do anything more than create the archives of the future. And whole archives get burnt at once, you know? Everything, even what we think of as greatness now, is disposable. Just because it's of high quality doesn't mean it's going to last better. If it doesn't get burnt or shredded, or rot away, people of the future can just decide not to look at it.

You have to be reconciled to that, if you're a writer, I think. You have to be writing for reasons that make sense in spite of the fact that in a century or less you and your works won't exist in anyone's memory. It doesn't make what you're doing any less of an art, or any less valuable. It just means you're not fooling yourself.

Meanwhile, a bit of snarking

Hi Gwyneth!

12 March, 2006

Black Juice is a Los Angeles Times finalist

I'm delighted to be able to tell you that Markus Zusak's I Am the Messenger and my Black Juice are finalists in the Young Adult Section of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The other finalists are Michael L. Printz winner John Green's Looking for Alaska, Per Nilsson's You & You & You and Andreas Steinhöfel's The Center of the World.

The finalists were announced in New York on Thursday, and the winner will be announced in Los Angeles on 28 April.

About Me

I write fiction. My latest novel is Zeroes, the first book of the Zeroes trilogy (YA fantasy), a collaboration with Scott Westerfeld and Deborah Biancotti. My novel Sea Hearts is published as The Brides of Rollrock Island in the UK and the US. I've also written Tender Morsels and five short story collections: White Time, Black Juice, Red Spikes, Yellowcake and Cracklescape.